Williams says: "Cassia grows in all the southern provinces of China, especially Kwangsi and Yunnan, also in Annam, Japan, and the Isles of the Archipelago. The wood, bark, buds, seeds, twigs, pods, leaves, oil, are all objects of commerce. The buds (kwei-tz') are the fleshy ovaries of the seeds; they are pressed at one end, so that they bear some resemblance to cloves in shape." Upwards of 500 piculs (about 30 tons), valued at 30 dollars each, are annually exported to Europe and India. (Chin. Commercial Guide, 113-114.)

66

The only doubt as regards this explanation will probably be whether the cassia would be found at such a height as we may suppose to be that of the country in question above the sea-level. I know that cassia. bark is gathered in the Kasia Hills of Eastern Bengal up to a height of about 4000 feet above the sea, and at least the valleys of Caindu " are probably not too elevated for this product. Indeed, that of the Kinsha or Brius, near where I suppose Polo to cross it, is only 2600 feet. Positive evidence I cannot adduce. No cassia or cinnamon was met with by M. Garnier's party where they intersected this region.

But in this 2nd edition I am able to state on the authority of Baron Richthofen that cassia is produced in the whole length of the valley of Kienchang (which is, as we shall see in the notes on next chapter, Caindu), though in no other part of Szechwan nor in northern Yunnan.

Ethnology. The Chinese at Chingtufu, according to Richthofen, classify the aborigines of the Szechwan frontier as Mantsé, Lolo, Sifan, and Tibetan. Of these the Sifan are furthest north, and extend far into Tibet. The Mantsé (properly so called) are regarded as the remnant of the ancient occupants of Szechwan, and now dwell in the mountains about the parallel 30°, and along the Lhása road, Tat'sianlu being about the centre of their tract. The Lolo are the wildest and most independent, occupying the mountains on the left of the Kinsha-Kiang where it runs northwards (see above p. 40, and below p. 57) and also to some extent on its right. The Tibetan tribes lie to the west of the Mantsé, and to the west of Kienchang (see next chapter).

Towards the Lantsang Kiang is the quasi-Tibetan tribe called by the Chinese Mossos, by the Tibetans Guions, and between the Lantsang and the Lú-Kiang or Salwen are the Lissús, wild hill-robbers and great musk hunters, like those described by Polo at p. 37. Garnier, who gives these latter particulars, mentions that near the confluence of the Yalung and Kinsha Kiang there are tribes called Pa-i, as there are in the south of Yunnan, and, like the latter, of distinctly Shan or Laotian character. He also speaks of Sifan tribes in the vicinity of Likiang-fu, and coming south of the Kinsha-Kiang even to the east of Tali. Of these are told such loose tales as Polo tells of Tebet and Caindu.

These ethnological matters have to be handled cautiously, for there is great ambiguity in the nomenclature. Thus Mantsé is often used

generically for aborigines, and the Lolos of Richthofen are called Mantsé by Garnier and Blakiston; whilst Lolo again has in Yunnan. apparently a very comprehensive generic meaning, and is so used by Garnier (Richt. Letter VII. 67-68 and MS. notes; Garnier, I. 519 segg.)

CHAPTER XLVIII.

CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF CARAJAN.

WHEN you have passed that River you enter on the province of CARAJAN, which is so large that it includes seven kingdoms. It lies towards the west; the people are Idolaters, and they are subject to the Great Kaan. A son of his, however, is there as King of the country, by name ESSENTIMUR; a very great and rich and puissant Prince; and he well and justly rules his dominion, for he is a wise man and a valiant.

After leaving the river that I spoke of, you go five days' journey towards the west, meeting with numerous towns and villages. The country is one in which excellent horses are bred, and the people live by cattle and agriculture. They have a language of their own which is passing hard to understand. At the end of those five days' journey you come to the capital, which is called YACHI, a very great and noble city, in which are numerous merchants and craftsmen.'

The people are of sundry kinds, for there are not only Saracens and Idolaters, but also a few Nestorian Christians." They have wheat and rice in plenty. Howbeit they never eat wheaten bread, because in that country it is unwholesome.3 Rice they eat, and make of it sundry messes, besides a kind of drink which is very clear and good, and makes a man drunk just as wine does.

Their money is such as I will tell you. They use for the purpose certain white porcelain shells that are found

in the sea, such as are sometimes put on dogs' collars; and 80 of these porcelain shells pass for a single weight of silver, equivalent to two Venice groats, i. e. 24 piccoli. Also eight such weights of silver count equal to one such weight of gold.

They have brine-wells in this country from which they make salt, and all the people of those parts make a living by this salt. The King, too, I can assure you, gets a great revenue from this salt.5

There is a lake in this country of a good hundred miles in compass, in which are found great quantities of the best fish in the world; fish of great size, and of all sorts.

They reckon it no matter for a man to have intimacy with another's wife, provided the woman be willing.

Let me tell you also that the people of that country eat their meat raw, whether it be of mutton, beef, buffalo, poultry, or any other kind. Thus the poor people will go to the shambles, and take the raw liver as it comes from the carcase and cut it small, and put it in a sauce of garlic and spices, and so eat it; and other meat in like manner, raw, just as we eat meat that is dressed."

Now I will tell you about a further part of the Province of Carajan, of which I have been speaking.

NOTE 1.-We have now arrived at the great province of CARAJAN, the KARÁJÁNG of the Mongols, which we know to be YUNNAN, and at its capital YACHI, which I was about to add-we know to be YUNNAN-FU. But I find all the commentators make it something else. Rashiduddin, however, in his detail of the twelve Sings or provincial governments of China under the Mongols, thus speaks: “10th, KARÁJÁNG. This used to be an independent kingdom, and the Sing is established at the great city of YACHI. All the inhabitants are Mahomedans. The chiefs are Noyan Takin and Yakub Beg, son of 'Ali Beg, the Belúch." And turning to Pauthier's corrected account of the same distribution of the empire from authentic Chinese sources (p. 334), we find: "8. The administrative province of Yunnan. . . . Its capital, chief town also of the canton of the same name, was called Chung-khing, now YUNNAN-FU." Hence Yachi was Yunnan-fu. This is still a large city, having a rectangular rampart with 6 gates, and a circuit of about 6 miles. The

The most im

suburbs were destroyed by the Mahomedan rebels.
portant trade there now is in the metallic produce of the Province.

Yachi was perhaps an ancient corruption of the name Yecheu, which the territory bore (according to Martini and Biot) under the Han; but more probably Yecheu was a Chinese transformation of the real name The Shans still call the city Muang Chi, which is perhaps

another modification of the same name.

We have thus got Chingtu-fu as one fixed point, and Yunnan-fu as another, and we have to track the traveller's itinerary between the two, through what Ritter called with reason a terra incognita. What little was known till recently of this region came from the Catholic missionaries. Of late the veil has begun to be lifted; the daring excursion of Francis Garnier and his party in 1868 intersected the tract towards the south ; Mr. T. T. Cooper crossed it further north, by Tat'sianlu, Lithang and Bathang; Baron v. Richthofen in 1872 had penetrated several marches towards the heart of the mystery, when an unfortunate mishap compelled his return, but he brought back with him much precious information.

Five days forward from Chingtu-fu brought us on Tibetan ground. Five days backward from Yunnan-fu should bring us to the River Brius, with its gold-dust and the frontier of Caindu. Wanting a local scale for a distance of five days, I find that our next point in advance, Marco's city of Carajan, undisputedly Tali-fu, is said by him to be ten days. from Yachi. The direct distance between the cities of Yunnan and Tali I find by measurement on Keith Johnston's map to be. 133 Italian miles. Taking half this as radius, the compasses, swept from Yunnan-fu as centre, intersect near its most southerly elbow the great upper branch of the Kiang, the Kin-sha Kiang of the Chinese, or River of the Golden Sands," the MURUS USSU and BRICHU of the Mongols and Tibetans, and manifestly the auriferous BRIUS of our traveller. Hence also the country north of this elbow is CAINDU.

I leave the preceding paragraph as it stood in the first edition, because it shows how near the true position of Caindu these unaided deductions from our author's data had carried me. That paragraph was followed by an erroneous hypothesis as to the intermediate part of that journey, but, thanks to the new light shed by Baron Richthofen, we are enabled now to lay down the whole itinerary from Chingtu-fu to Yunnan-fu with confidence in its accuracy.

The Kinsha Kiang or Upper course of the Great Yangtsze, descending from Tibet to Yunnan, forms the great bight or elbow to which allusion has just been made, and which has been a feature known to geographers ever since the publication of D'Anville's atlas. The tract enclosed in this elbow is cut in two by another great Tibetan River, the Yarlung, or Yalung-Kiang, which joins the Kinsha not far from the middle of the great bight; and this Yalung, just before the confluence, receives on the left a stream of inferior calibre, the Nganning-Ho, which